


Far to Go

by wishonadarkstar



Series: Legacies [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Birthday Party, Coming of Age, Everyone is scared of Ben Solo, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 02:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15741954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishonadarkstar/pseuds/wishonadarkstar
Summary: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.― H.P. Lovecraft





	Far to Go

Poe Dameron was Ben’s greatest and grandest friend, and Ben hardly noticed that he was spending fewer and fewer nights at his own home as he grew up.

Sometimes, Ben hated Poe Dameron more than anything in the world, but he didn’t notice that either, and neither did nearly anyone else.

“Can’t catch me!” Poe screamed, and then he threw a glop of mud directly at Ben’s face. Ben shrieked and gave chase, throwing mud himself, most of which it was impossible for Poe Dameron to duck, through some quirk of fate that Ben wasn’t very skilled at determining.

Uncle Kes, who had noticed both that he had the care of Leia Organa’s child more often than not, especially since the Senate had started downsizing the Fleet beyond the scope of her treaty, and that Ben sometimes hated his son, simply stood and watched as Poe failed to dodge or duck, and he thumbed the call activation on his wristcom. No one answered, of course.

“Can too!” Ben shouted, even as Poe went straight for his favorite tree and scrambled frantically up it.

Ben was smaller than Poe, but he’d catch up in height fast, or Kes didn’t know little boys. That worried him a little bit, though he did his best not to let that show through when Ben might be paying attention.

He may not know much about the Jedi, but he’d spent enough time around Leia and Luke to know that kind of worry would probably get picked up by Ben straightaway, and then they’d be in all kinds of trouble.

“Ben, stop!” Poe screamed, and Kes started forward at the sound of his distress, but not fast enough. Poe tumbled from the tree, and Ben cried out in terror and _reached_ , but even Kes could see that it wasn’t enough, and Poe hit the muddy ground with a dull _crack_ that had his heart in his throat as he raced across his lawn.

Poe sat up, looking dull-eyed and confused, and Ben jumped from branch to branch with a preternatural ability to get to his side.

“Poe!” Ben said, distress in every line of his body. “Poe, you’ve _got_ to be okay! I only pushed a little! You have to be okay.”

“Ancestors watch over my sorry ass,” Kes muttered under his breath, trying his best to feel nothing but calm reassurance when all he wanted to do was strangle the little boy who had pushed his _son_ , the only family he had left, his wife’s legacy, out of a tree.

He was not, he knew, at all successful, because when he reached to touch Poe, Ben jerked away and his eyes glittered with a sharp spark of hatred before he shouted some wordless noise and fled into the forest.

Kes knew that he needed to go after him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so, not even once the emergency medics made it in from the town and reassured him that Poe’s broken wrist would be fine with only a few days of healing.

He knew that chasing Ben angry would probably ruin every one of them, and the thought left him cold.

***

Luke Skywalker landed on Yavin IV exactly one week prior to the anniversary of the signing of the Instruments of Surrender, or so the holocasts proclaimed, proudly panning across the dignified figure the Jedi cut against the backdrop of his old x-wing.

The gossip went wild about which of the galas on the planet he’d be attending. Luke, in typical fashion, refused to comment.

It was the tenth anniversary of the treaty, the news cried loudly. It was certainly entirely probable that Luke Skywalker would break his hermitage for one of the celebratory galas.

Why else, they mused, would the man leave his hand-picked students and hand-built temple to go to Yavin IV.

***

Ben was huddled in his parents’ closet when Luke found him, wrapped up in the soft white gown his mother had never gotten to wear for the signing of the Galactic Concordance, and Luke reflected that it probably wasn’t a coincidence at all.

His face was teary, and he said in a short, dull, voice, “Uncle Kes and Poe hate me.”

“No, no,” Luke said. “Who told you that?”

“I felt it!” Ben snapped, and Luke nodded solemnly, but he filled the Force between them with what he had learned in a very different dark and quiet room a long time ago: an irresistible sense of curiosity and interest.

There was interrogation, after all, and then there was _interrogation_.

“My friend told me,” Ben whispered finally.

Luke nodded again.

“Your friend seems to know a lot,” he said. “If he can tell you how your very best friend and your uncle feel about you, and you can’t tell as much.”

“I _said_ I felt it!” Ben said stubbornly.

“Ben,” Luke said. “I believe you. Why don’t you tell me exactly what they felt like? Maybe we can ask them about it, together.”

“No!” Ben yelled, the fury that licked the Force coming from him startling Luke in its intensity. He shut his eyes-- Leia had said that Ben couldn’t be his, that Ben must belong to the whole galaxy whether any one of them liked it, but Luke could tell, now, that she had been wrong.

The future had never been his to grasp, but the sick feeling of fracture in Ben’s essence was unmistakable to his experience.

It wasn’t too late, he felt sure; but how to fix it?

“Ben, please,” Luke said. “I just want to understand. I thought Kes and Poe were my friends too, and I need to know why they hate my very favorite nephew.”

“I hurt Poe,” Ben admitted. “And it scared Uncle Kes. And Poe thought he was going to die, I could feel that, like he was yelling it in my head. It wasn’t fun,” he added, eyes wide and wet. “My friend said it would be fun to feel someone die like that, but it _wasn’t_.”

Luke had too much practice with his emotions at that point to let even a hint of his relief show through the calm curiosity he was projecting, but it was a very near thing.

They were fine. Everything was fine. “Well,” Luke said. “I think there’s an easy way to clear this up. You come with me, and we’ll explain to Uncle Kes and Poe that you’re very sorry, and that you are still excited for them to come to your birthday, and we’ll see how they feel when you say that.”

“Poe likes to play Ewok in the forest with me,” Ben said. “Do you think he still wants to?”

“Probably,” Luke said. “Do you climb trees?”

“No,” Ben said, grinning slightly. “We hide from the people who come to the memorial and then we scare ‘em so they don’t want to come bother the house.”

“You hide?” Luke asked, amused despite himself. “Do you just hide, or do you, you know, _hide_?”

Ben grinned, which was answer enough.

***

When Ben came back, Poe was genuinely relieved.

His dad had been running himself into the ground, terrified that he’d _damaged_ Ben, somehow, which was just ridiculous. Ben got a little weird and crazy sometimes, and Ben’s parents weren’t ever around, not for ages now, but he wasn’t _damaged_ like some of the other Rebel aunts and uncles that Poe had known.

He was just a little weird.

Ben bit his lip angrily, and then said “I don’t want you to die, Poe Dameron. Not ever.”

Poe shrugged and then grabbed him in a hug, holding him tight and remembering how glad he’d been that Ben had slowed him down falling out of the tree. The kids from his day school all made fun of him for being friends with a baby like Ben, who was only just about to be ten compared to all of their thirteen, but none of them could have saved his life after they accidentally knocked him out of the tree.

“Thanks, Ben,” he said vehemently, clutching his friend as tightly as he could. “I don’t want to die either.”

Ben nodded into his chest, and then he stepped back, and looked up at Uncle Luke. “Do you think… maybe my other friend was lying?”

Luke gave Ben his grave, solemn regard, the way he always treated questions from the Rebel kids, then licked his lips.

Poe shifted uncomfortably, and dad looked on the verge of saying something.

“Obi-Wan,” he said, which was weird because absolutely no one called Ben by his real name except for the holonews, and Uncle Kes said it was important that no one start doing that, or people might remember that Ben wasn’t actually in reality Poe’s kid cousin. “I think that it is important, for people like you and me, to trust in our feelings more than any outside actor. The Force is with us, always, and if you learn to listen to it above all else, you will be fine.”

“My other friend said that the Force was mine to command,” Ben explained.

Poe opened his mouth to demand to know who Ben was hanging out with, saying such bantha crap about the Force. Everyone knew that Uncle Luke was the galaxy’s foremost expert on the Force, and he’d always said the Force couldn’t be commanded, only understood and embraced.

Uncle Luke hated it when people said wrong things about the Force.

Uncle Luke sent Poe a _look,_ though, and then his tongue got tripped up and wrapped up, so he couldn’t say anything at all.

“The Force cannot be commanded,” Luke said. “It can be _directed_ , but only if you are patient with it, if you understand it. You told me that you could feel how Poe felt when he was going to die, right?”

Ben nodded avidly, and Dad made a funny choking noise. “Your friend thinks that because he can feel that _all the time_ , he can command the Force. What he doesn’t know, is that he will die feeling that way, and the Force will have been in command the whole time.”

Ben shuddered. “Uncle Luke,” Ben said. “I don’t like it.”

Luke swooped down and wrapped his arms around Ben, and Poe realized for maybe the first time that out of all the Rebel kids, Ben was his only actual for real nephew, and he was mixed with envy and fear.

“Poe, it’s okay,” Uncle Luke said from over the top of Ben’s head. “We’re all safe here on Yavin IV, and no one can touch Ben here, or any of you.”

Poe nodded.

“You’re still my friend, right?” Ben asked, muffled in Uncle Luke’s robes.

Poe jerked and found that his tongue and teeth were his again.

“I’m always gonna be your friend, weirdo,” Poe swore solemnly.

“Okay,” Ben said, and then he clenched his fists in Uncle Luke’s robes. “Good. I’ll remember that.”

***

Lando landed at Yavin’s spaceport with a lot less fanfare than the hermit-like Luke Skywalker, with two holo messages he was not actually excited to deliver in his possession.

He’d gotten young Ben Organa-Solo a cape and a new little repair droid that had only a minimum of AI.

They couldn’t trust true AI around Ben, not with the four assassination attempts on Leia in the last year, but Lando thought it was maybe robbing the kid of some of his legacy to keep him isolated from electronics for his entire childhood just out of fear.

Also, Lando was slightly more inclined to trust droids to do the moral thing than some of the other Rebellion veterans who’d faced the Imperial interrogator droids, but that was life and experiences for you, really.

He was running late, so he got to the rented pavillion for the birthday boy with the party well in progress. Ben was running around yelling his head off with a bunch of the other kids, and it felt sort of like a reunion.

Until the second Death Star had gone down, the Rebel Alliance had been like a tiny club, and every member had known every other member, and so this small group’s kids had all known each other their entire lives.

None of them had the strange weight of legacy that the current birthday boy had, but at least with everyone under the age of fifteen, still, no one treated him like anything but a cousin or a brother.

It was a good life, Lando thought. The sort of life he’d never thought he’d be able to secure for anyone when he’d been twenty and stupid and under the thumbs of cartels and criminal syndicates alike.

And here was Han’s kid, running around on a proper planet, with trees and dirt and security.

It was enough to make a man get a little sappy in his old age.

Ben spotted him and changed direction abruptly to throw his arms around Lando’s waist.

“Uncle Lando, what did you bring me!” he demanded in the high clear tones of a boy who’d never known fear or deprivation.

Lando grinned at him. “Maybe I didn’t get you anything, you little scoundrel,” he said.

Ben frowned at him.

“You got me something,” he said after a second. Lando sucked in a sharp breath and _felt_ Luke across the crowd. He looked up to catch that uncanny blue gaze.

“I did,” Lando conceded. “You want the goods?”

“Please,” Ben said, suddenly the picture of courtly manners and sweetness.

Lando laughed and gave him both the cape and the little repair droid, expecting him to run off and examine them, to set them aside and rejoin his friends.

Instead, he stared up at Lando and said, “Uncle Lando, I know you don’t want to give me the rest, but you’re going to have to eventually.”

He sounded… not ten. Lando had grown used to Ben’s oddness years ago, though, so he just shook his head and handed the datacard he’d copied both of Ben’s parents’ messages onto, and grinned ruefully.

“Never could hold one over on you, kid,” Lando remarked, ruffling Ben’s hair.

Ben smiled up at him, a smile that was all Han Solo, and Lando shook his head, laughing a little at himself and the kid he’d spent a decade spoiling rotten.

The holos were from Han and Leia, all smiles and “Happy Birthday!” and apologies for not being able to make it, which kind of irked Lando-- everyone _else_ had made it to their kid’s tenth birthday, but he knew Leia had needed to make an appearance at the Senatorial Gala and Han had gotten literally tied up somewhere between Yavin and the Outer Rim.

There was a chill in the air that Lando was surprised to feel; he knew what the weather was like on Yavin IV this time of year, after all, and it didn’t seem to be breezy, just a chill.

“They can’t come?” Ben asked, his voice as hard and smooth as durasteel.

“No, kid,” Lando said, crouching down to meet his eyes. “But your dad will be here tomorrow and your mom said she’d make it by the end of the week.”

“That’s not _good_ enough!” Ben snapped, and his eyes were aglow with something fierce and unfamiliar. “It’s not _fair_!” he shouted.

The hair on the back of Lando’s neck all stood up on end, and then Ben stamped his foot, and a great _crack_ rent the air.

Lando toppled back with the force of it all, and then Ben stamped his foot again. “Where _are_ they?!” he demanded of no one at all.

Luke was there, as if by magic, directly between Lando and Ben who was nothing like Han Solo in that moment.

Lando barely recognized either of them, and then Luke said in a voice that could command an Empire to its knees: “ _Obi-Wan Skywalker Naberrie Organa-Solo, you will calm down_.”

Lando shuddered in a visceral response to that voice, felt the fear that he hadn’t recognized drain from his skin, felt the anger drain from the world, and then Ben’s eyes were the same warm brown of his father’s again.

“Uncle Luke?” Ben asked, his voice tiny and fearful and very ten.

“Shh,” Luke said, gathering his nephew into his arms and pressing a kiss to his forehead that had the kid dropping like a puppet with its strings cut.

He stood up, the boy limp and lifeless in his arms.

Luke shook his head at Lando, and then glanced around at the gathered crowd once before moving to take Ben inside.

Everyone flowed out of his way, and Lando sat there, toppled to the ground and helpless in the face of a ten year old throwing a fit, and cursed in every language he knew.

A few of the Rebels gathered had been Imperial defectors, and one of them knew someone who’d been a half-trained Inquisitor before they’d ran and hidden, and another Rebel said she’d heard Fulcrum was still alive and well, and by the time Lando had gathered the presents and stashed them in the Solo-Organa house, half the adults present had a dozen terrible plans in place for how to quietly deal with the chaotic Force-user in their midst.

Lando realized with a sick feeling that he hated every one of them.

“One thing’s sure,” he overheard a being who he’d once spent three days floating in a derelict ship with to avoid an Imp patrol remark, “We can’t let Master Skywalker take him-- my grandson is in that school! Who knows what will happen if he joins them.”

Lando bit his tongue on the response burning in his heart: what would _happen_ was Ben would be trained to handle his powers so he could use them for good. What would _happen_ would be the child of Generals Organa and Solo would be loved and cared for the way he deserved to be.

But Lando was half sure that if he didn’t act, none of that would happen; his nephew would be dead before dawn.

He left the pavillion and met Kes Dameron on his way out.

“What’s your bright idea?” Kes snapped angrily, looming between Lando and the house. “Who’re you going to call to kill my kid?”

Lando cocked his head and made the sort of snap decision that had led to him being the best smuggler in a galaxy under the worst of oppressions, that had led to him becoming a planetary governor and an Alliance general and a senator.

“I’m calling Han,” Lando said, a quiet, forceful truth, and Kes heaved a sigh of relief. Poe dropped down from a tree and holstered a blaster. It was funny how that was the part that broke Lando’s heart.

“Come on,” Kes said. “Poe, go with the original plan. I’ll watch Uncle Lando’s back.”

***

The Millennium Falcon might be the most famous ship in the galaxy, but she was also still a beat down YT-1300 freighter, so not a soul noticed when she took her place at the Yavin IV starport, and Han left Chewbacca with her to keep the engines hot.

He was scared.

Not because of what Lando had said about his son losing his temper-- his son was kriffing _ten_ \-- but because of how the message had come.

They hadn’t had occasion to use the old encryption channels since before they’d joined the Rebel Alliance, and the only reason Lando would bother with that bit of ancient history would be to avoid having the Alliance decipher his codes.

He had a _very_ bad feeling about what that meant, a feeling that just worsened and worsened as he saw the people camping at the rented pavillion, lumps of dark Imp uniforms in among the sleeping forms of his friends.

He half-expected to encounter Luke, but maybe Luke had his own plans for Ben too.

Poe jumped in front of the door, blaster held high, and Han froze, hands up on instinct.

“You’re _thirteen_ ,” Han said, feeling horror down to his toes. Poe shouldn’t need to have a blaster, not on Yavin IV, not as a kid.

“He’s my best friend,” Poe said. “He didn’t even _hurt_ anyone, not like when he pushed me out of the tree.”

Han nodded. “Kid, I know. That’s why I’m here.”

Poe frowned at him, and then he handed over the blaster. “Just in case,” he said, slipping out of the doorway, presumably to keep watch elsewhere.

Han slid the blaster into the back of his belt, hoping he wouldn’t need it.

Ben woke at his touch, his eyes dark and fearful, and Han knew some of that was his fault, scared as he was himself. “Hey there,” Han said.

“Who’s here?” Ben asked after a few seconds, a frown coloring his face.

“Kind of glad I don’t know, to be honest with you,” Han said.

“Where are we going?” Ben asked.

Han laughed, soft and quiet. “Figure that out when we get there, son.”

Ben nodded slowly.

“Think you can keep those jokers from noticing us?”

Ben frowned and concentrated for a few seconds, and then he touched Han’s cheek. “Yeah, I can. They’ll wake up but they won’t see.”

Han shivered, but Ben was a Solo, and there were only two Solos in the entire universe, so he shoved his fear aside and picked up his son and they slipped through the shadows and back to the Falcon with no one the wiser.


End file.
